


He Waits, In The Palace, Up Those Stairs

by Hawkbringer



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Homunculi, M/M, Mind Palace, Mindfuck, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Therapy, Tulpas, Will Graham's mind is a powerful force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:08:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23722138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkbringer/pseuds/Hawkbringer
Summary: "I don't deserve to kill you, Dr Lecter. You deserve to die. There's a difference." A season-2-style therapy session, after which Hannibal experiences some... irregularities, and must make his peace with them. (written july 2015)
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Kudos: 7





	He Waits, In The Palace, Up Those Stairs

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sisyphean](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3832906) by [Nerve_Itch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerve_Itch/pseuds/Nerve_Itch). 



> original writing date: 30th July 2015
> 
> Fewer tags than usual to avoid spoilers for fic. No content warnings needed, I don't think.
> 
> author's notes: I started this while in the middle of reading Sisyphean, Chapter 3, because I wanted to see Will and Hannibal talking plainly about each of their motivations in the way they had had their therapy sessions in the past. I figured it would be happening in /someone/'s brain, as, perhaps, the action of their gruesome foreplay after Will murders a nameless Polish boy, is still going on 'outside' so to speak.

"It's so /stable/, here, with you. I know exactly what you want of me, I know exactly what you want me to do." 

"And what is that, Will?" 

"You want me to /hurt/ you." 

"Yes." Said flatly, to goad further explanation. 

"You want me to /own/ you, to own everything you've ever done to me. You want me to /dominate you/," Will enunciates with a flourish. 

"Yes," Hannibal replies simply, not moving from his therapist's chair. 

"No," Will replies, eyes narrowing in realization. "More than that. You want me to /want/ to dominate you." No words for a reply, merely Hannibal's mouth falling just slightly open, as though to better /taste/ the air. "You want me to give everything up, to become /just like you/ and /take/ what I want from you. You want me to want to take." 

"Do you want to want to take?" 

Will shakes his head vehemently. 

"That doesn't matter /at all/ right now, does it, Dr Lecter? I will become what you want me to be... I overpower you, and I incarcerate you. Perhaps I even kill you." 

Hannibal inclines his head forward in acknowledgement. 

"If you can. You will certainly have earned it." 

Will smiles as he shakes his head, wry amusement plain on his face. 

"I don't deserve to kill you, Dr Lecter. You deserve to die. There's a difference." 

"One you know very well," Lecter allows. Then, "Would you allow anyone else the final victory of my death? Or would you keep it for yourself?" 

Will shakes his head again, mirth gone. 

"Of course no one else is worthy of killing you, Dr Lecter, that is obvious. No one else has been so under your thrall. Only by my hand would your death be /elegant./" Hannibal can do nothing but agree. 

"But I much prefer you /alive/," Will adds, surprising Hannibal slightly. 

"Oh? How so? What service do I provide in life that I cannot in death?" 

Will affixes Hannibal with a serious stare and Hannibal resists the impulse to sit further forward on his seat in happy anticipation for what manipulative words are about to spill from Will's lips. What he gets is entirely the truth, and Hannibal could not be prouder that Will has mastered this skill. 

"You can /cut/... Through all the dross in my head, all the voices, all the screaming, and render them all mute. Deaf, dumb, and /dismembered./ When you touch me... I see just one color. Just /one/. D'you know how /rare/ that is for me? To have such /focus/ in my mind? While still remaining /me/?" It's a rhetorical question meant to sweep away any retaliatory proddings Hannibal might make regarding the killers Will has soaked his mind in. "I like that version of me. I like who I am when you hold me. I don't want to overpower you, no. That's the /last/ thing I could want. I want..." 

His throat works, belaying the first hint of second thoughts Will feels about allowing this trainwreck of a confession to overrun Hannibal. There are costs to too much honesty that Will Graham knows too well. 

"I want to remain your hostage for as long as humanly possible. I don't want to /become/, Hannibal. I don't want to feel anything but this /peace/ you bring me when you tell me what to do. I don't feel /at peace/ any other way." He starts shaking his head slowly, eyebrows drawn together. "You /tell/ me I'll feel something /better/ than that peace when I finally have all the /power/ in our relationship, but tell me, Doctor. Why would you be seeking to give your power up, if it were something really /worth/ holding onto?" 

Hannibal sits back in his chair, lacing his fingers together and considering Will's words. Turnabout is fair play, he muses, and blinks twice before lifting his face subtly towards the ceiling. "I have never known the peace you do," he replies, making Will's mouth softly fall open at the extravagant gift Hannibal is offering - his /honesty/. "No one has ever attempted to hold me. Nor have I ever asked. No one has been worthy of the attempt, before you. I wish to experience what you do, and I wish you to experience me, as I am. As I have been for so long. It will be just another facet of the many ways we have begun to blur." Will tilts his head, birdlike, seeing an opening in Hannibal's words. 

"And what if we reach this outcome? What if I overcome and you submit and we /reach/ that place of truly Becoming the other? What if we get there.... And we don't like it?" Hannibal's eyebrows lift and he cannot prevent the smallest questioning noise from escaping his throat. 

"Say I truly /feel/ all this power you say you do. And you truly /feel/ the submission /I/ do. And of the two experiences, you prefer the former. And so do I. What if we're both more suited for these roles we're currently in?" 

"The outcome has nothing to do with the process of arriving at it," Hannibal nearly interrupts Will to assert. "If indeed that eventuality materializes, we will take steps to move forward from that. But having lived the complete coup d'etat will be an /extraordinary/ experience." 

He closes his eyes to savor the imagined sensation of himself /becoming/ Will Graham, of having /himself/ stare down at him through Will Graham's glittering eyes as /Hannibal/ fucks /Will,/ in their opposite bodies. 

"So the outcome doesn't really matter to you," Will supplies from the darkness beyond Hannibal's imagining. 

He fantasies briefly that it appears from his own head, that Will has blurred into him already, that he is speaking from behind Hannibal's eyes. 

(He'll never know if he's alone in the world as a person until he is thoroughly convinced otherwise - until he is /taken out of/ the world, out of /himself/ and put into someone /else/ who is his equal. And he's never, until now, /met/ his equal.) 

"It is not the point of the exercise, no," he allows, opening his eyes slowly and taking in the vision of Will sitting across from him, cleaned and pressed and not smelling nearly as sweet as he once did. It is the fact that he has changed his aftershave that finally alerts Hannibal to the fact that this conversation is taking place solely in their minds. But whose, he does not know. He attempts to open his eyes on the physical plane, attempts to rise out of his memory palace in the way he has always done, putting things aside and turning to face the far-off voices... But he hears nothing. He cannot leave. His lips part in wondrous acknowledgement as he comes to see that /he/ is the whispering voice behind Will Graham's eyes. /Will/ is controlling this conversation. He himself is not the point of this exercise, either. 

Will smiles like he's disgusted by something and declares, "If the point of the exercise, as you put it, is the /experience/... Then why would you ever want it to end?" He tilts his head and puts on his sassy expression, making his homunculus-Hannibal's breath nearly catch. "I think we're in a good place right now. Don't /you/ ever want to quit while you're ahead? Stand still and make a moment last forever?" 

Hannibal smiles and prepares to have Will's attention turn from him, prepares to watch Will fade to dust and rise up and rejoin the world beyond this, his mind palace. Prepares to be left behind. 

"I do. But such things as wants do not stop the world from turning, Will. And it is time for you to go back to it." 

Will's brows furrow. "Our time is up?" 

Hannibal does not glance at the wood and glass clock off to his left. It will not tell him anything he does not already know. 

"Yes. Until next time, dear Will." A tad confused, Will blinks in acquiescence. 

"Until next time, Doctor." 

Between Hannibal's blinks, Will is gone, disappeared from the chair without leaving any indentation of his weight in the cushion. Hannibal rises, crosses to it and lays one hand upon the center of its back. The phantom Will left no heat at all. 

Very faintly indignant that the apparition couldn't have been just a tad more generous with its sensible qualities, the now self-aware memory of Hannibal Lecter, MD, straightens in his elegantly-appointed office and goes to pour a glass of wine. His lips twist when he finds not wine in his cabinet, but whiskey. His lips twist further when he identifies the make as something absurdly expensive that does, in fact, fit his aesthetic. Will has never gifted him with this. Perhaps he meant to, once, and did so mentally when he could not physically. (Sugar Daddy Will and Homunculus Hannibal AU idea sprouts here)

He spends the next vague and undefinable handful of hours imbibing and scouting the edges of his mental prison. He opens the office door, and the one beyond that, and the one beyond that. Upon the stoop of his office building, Hannibal stands and regards the howling cold and dark of the accustomed street outside. Every time Will has left this place, it has been dark out. He supposes he cannot fault Will for fearing the world outside his womb-like influence. Preening, Hannibal decides to return to his office, where sunlight streams through the muslin curtains and the fire always heartily roars. In gratitude for Will's thoughtfulness in this regard, Hannibal decides to remain in his office space, if this is where Will desires that they meet. He returns to the warm and sunlit room and ascends the ladder on the bookcases. 

When Will next comes him, Hannibal is standing on the second level, reading through some of his old medical textbooks. It truly is astounding, how much detail is still present in every book Hannibal has picked out so far. It isn't too far-fetched to imagine Will has read them himself, and retains the memory of their contents, regurgitated here in the most sensible form. Will hasn't been away very long, he thinks. But he acknowledges he cannot know. He shuts the book, replaces it upon its accustomed shelf, and debates whether or not to invite Will upstairs with him, to examine together the intricacies and minutia of the absurdly-detailed room Hannibal the Homunculus is now trapped in. 

He forgoes this due to the troubled look on his beloved's face and offers one hand on his shoulder in comfort as they both gravitate towards the impossible, soothing sunlight emanating from the muslin curtains covering the high windows. 

Hannibal has no idea what he'll see if he pushes them back - he cannot recall if Will ever saw the view from there himself, and he knows now, knows it in the marrow of his bones, that he cannot know anything Will Graham does not know, cannot be anything Will Graham cannot imagine for him. But his brain marinates in the motivations and machinations of the ugliest of killers. As Hannibal glances appraisingly at the mournful profile of his beloved, magnificent jailer, he supposes that at least, he will not be bored.

\---

authors note: Hannibal really surprised me. It started off in Will's mind, him laying out what he wanted, him being the more clear-headed one. But as he talked, the Hannibal he was talking to became more and more aware that /he/ was the construct. He took me along for the ride as he explored the limits of his physical location. Though there are none, really, he chose to remain where Will could find him easily again, rather like a photograph in the Harry Potter universe choosing to stick around for their owner's sake. Will imagined everything about this Hannibal, everything he could say, everything he would think. He imagined every word in every book Hannibal has upon his shelves. But he was sure, in creating this homunculus (I believe I'm using that term right), to inscribe upon his heart the all-encompassing love the real-life Hannibal feels for Will, because Will wants nothing but an /accurate/ representation of Hannibal to talk to, in his mind palace. He can't get anything out of it if the Hannibal in his mind isn't a free agent. 

Will /created/ Hannibal the Homunculus as a full person. It's rather astonishing, but we shouldn't be surprised for too long. Hannibal and Will Graham may be the only people capable of creating versions of others in their minds that are more than static, 2D copies of memories and wishes and inaccurate guesstimates. If WIll can do this for his Hannibal, it's not entirely impossible that Hannibal has made a Mischa in his head that can still surprise him. It's psychologically impossible - but so is Will Graham. So are both of them. And that is what makes them so well-matched. :) 

I /really/ appreciate this opportunity to be taken on a ride by a character, and with so few words necessary, too! Usually it takes me a /long/ ass time to get the characters developed to the point where, like Will in Sisyphean, they actually /desire/ to take the reigns of their own fates.

I wonder, sometimes, if the worlds we've written are real, somewhere. If the real world is just one of many alternate universes someone imagined one day where Europe survived the Black Plague, where agriculture caught on as a life-style experiment, where a single ameoba devoured a proto-plant cell and let it live. Where the multiple physics forces that make up our universe were separated. I wondered, once, if we are a universe that a baby thought up, wondering what it would be like if gravity existed. That thought stuck with me. 

We can all recognize when a rich fantastical universe has been created by an author. Discworld by Terry Prachett. Tolkein's Middle Earth. JKR's Wizarding World. Mike and Bryan's bending nations. Who's to say we all aren't peons in some grand story that has yet to happen? Or that was over long ago? If we /are/, if we're the OC's, the extras, the barely-there-on-screen characters only hardcore fans of Star Wars would bother looking into the history of... Then we are free. We have been created and our entire lives are ours to control. No one cares about the life of Suzy the Shopkeeper, or the children of Nameless Thug #3. Or the /author/ doesn't, at least. /We're free/. Alternatively, if we are the main characters, if our friends are, our co-workers, our bosses, our president... Then we can control God. 

How many authors have said that the characters got away from them, did things rushed or refused to work together at a pivotal plot point? The characters can sometimes direct the course of the story itself, if they are strong enough. /We could tell God how we wanted our world to end up,/ if we are main characters. If we are strong and self-aware enough. We can get everything we want. If we tell God loudly enough, wrest the reigns of control from Them, we can bend the entire planet to our whims. If that is what we want. 

Instill a reign of terror, bring about an age of peace. Settle down with several million dollars and no distractions in the Seychelles. We could /have/ it. But most people don't want that. They aren't willing to do all the /crazy/ things main characters generally have to, to get their happily ever after. Most people are content being Suzy the Shopkeeper who watches a mugging outside one day and perhaps gets her windows bashed in. She can recover from that. She could not recover from being the mug-ee, thrown in jail and orchestrating a grand scheme to escape with the help of strategically placed allies and a bit of luck and good timing. 

If you want to become a main character, you must accept a /grand/ responsibility.... But you earn the right to bend The Author to your will. it's not for everyone. And even if you were /never/ fated to be a world-shaker, you can still have complete freedom of choice within your chosen sphere of influence. The Author will not bother you... 

Only a very small percentage are unlucky in this regard. Killed for the sake of plot. But who doesn't think that sometimes, when looking at the pointless death of innocents on the TV Crime Roundup channels, which is all 'the news' seems to be these days. Who doesn't think that dozens, hundreds, /thousands/ are being sacrificed for the sake of plot, that it's all to goad a president into action, a nation into war, a leader to rise from the ashes? It's /insane/ and cruel, of /course/ it is, but if our own accounts of our history are to be believed... This planet quite simply has that kind of backstory. We /are/ a world, a 'universe,' of pointless bloodshed. We don't live in any children's picture book. Not one /I've/ ever read.


End file.
